


I Hope I Can Say What I Never Did

by BigBadFIA



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crime, Guns, Hopeful Ending, M/M, Mondaycore's Universe, NO DEATH, Remember kids crime doesn't pay, Swearing, Violence, Vodka, mafia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 19:42:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22551187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BigBadFIA/pseuds/BigBadFIA
Summary: Dany knows this world, and he knows he’ll wind up dead somewhere eventually, and all he wants to do between now and then is fucking burn shit down.
Relationships: Pierre Gasly/Daniil Kvyat
Comments: 17
Kudos: 50





	I Hope I Can Say What I Never Did

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mondaycore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaycore/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Restricted Work] by [mondaycore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaycore/pseuds/mondaycore). Log in to view. 



> First off, THANK YOU to mondaycore for not minding that I write this, because I just for some reason got stuck on the whole backdrop and Dany/Pierre. Thank you also, monday, for posting such great things for everyone to enjoy. Now, disclaimer, I halfway wrote this just because I wanted to add in Russian slang and boy did I have fun with that, but I hope it's decent and some of ya'll enjoy it.

Dany isn't exactly the most sympathetic person Pierre knows. In fact, if he's honest, Dany is kind of an asshole to a lot of people a lot of the time. 

Pierre remembers being part of that club himself for a not-insignificant amount of time. In fact, he can't pinpoint when that changed.

He suspects it changed because he just stopped being bothered by Dany's rough-around-the-edges-and-sometimes-in-the-middle ways. There was a point when Pierre must've just accepted that Dany is Dany, and that he would act the way he always has, and he can't remember ever cognitively making that choice. One day, he just realized that he had.

It's not as if he hasn't known Dany, in some capacity or other, for a while now, enough to be familiar with him. 

_ And vice versa.  _

It's the vice versa that really has him tripping out, though, because familiarity is supposed to breed contempt. Apparently, since Dany already has enough contempt for most things and most people, familiarity breeds...something else. 

Like now, when Daniil is pouring himself another glass of his favorite cure all. "Drink?"

"Only one more," Pierre says, and Dany laughs, because he knows it's a lie. 

"Fuck off." But it's lazy, and Pierre means nothing of the kind. He knows both of them are black sheep, and he knows Dany won't fuck off, just like Dany knows Pierre won't either.

Pierre has been waking up on Dany's couch (or in his bed) for months now; he has no place to go home to and he doesn't really know if he'd know home anymore if he saw it. It's like family. He has none, and he expects he never will. It's not as if Alex, Max, or Christian would ever consider him family despite all of them being part of Marko's Crime so-called Family. 

But Pierre is learning the art of survival from Dany, and he can't think of anyone with more expertise. Dany has none of the catlike, predatory, poisonous aura that Charles does, but Charles doesn't know what it's like to sleep on concrete in the cold and walk the streets without food until your belly considers eating itself. Dany isn't like Max, hothead, flashbang, guns blazing, all or nothing; he knows glory isn't lasting and he has no intention of dying for it. Pierre is beginning to follow in his footsteps, striking down the idols of total victory and hero's deaths and aiming for modest achievements and the preservation of his own skin. 

Dany hands Pierre the vodka, and Pierre, ever trying to be an adopted son of the Motherland, chokes it down. Dany just smiles faintly, drinking his glass like it's not burning rage in clear form. 

"Are you going out tomorrow?" Dany asks, like he has lately. 

"Probably," Pierre says. He recognizes the question for what it is: an odd, poorly constructed, makeshift attempt at caring for him.  _ Perhaps it's not so makeshift if I understand it.  _

"Mhm." Dany just looks at him, and Pierre feels a conversation between them take place in the monosyllabic answer.

_ Are you going out tomorrow? _

_ Of course. _

_ Alone? _

_ Not if you come. _

"I'm not getting up until nine," Dany says, as if they've spoken out loud.

"Okay," Pierre mumbles, swallowing down more vodka. He finishes his glass and Dany takes it from him, fills it again. Hands it back. Pierre takes another drink. 

"You're not Russian, don't try to be," Dany mocks, and Pierre rolls his eyes. 

The television plays on, but neither of them are looking at it. It's like a sad, single wavelength background track to their dingy, repetitive life here.  _ It keeps the cobwebs out of the brain _ . They don't talk. Pierre leans back and rests his head on Dany's leg, lets the warmth of the alcohol spread through him. Dany must be a little warm himself; he tangles his fingers in Pierre's hair faster than usual. 

"Do you ever think about what happens if we dealt with Merc?" Pierre asks, eyes heavy, brain running through old patterns of thought.

"No," says Dany. 

"You've never thought about it at all?" 

Daniil shrugs. "Why do I care?  _ Потом—суп с котом." _

"I hope not."

Dany snorts and lights a cigarette. 

Pierre finishes his drink and puts it on the table. He stands up stiffly, stretches, cracks his neck, his back, his fingers. "I'm going to bed."

"Okay." Dany takes a pull on his cigarette and blows smoke at the floor. 

"You could do that outside, you know."

"Don't tell me how to live in my own house."

Pierre just snickers and heads down the hall to the single dingy bedroom, no furniture, just a mattress on the floor, Dany's backpack of clothing against the wall, Pierre's black duffel next to it. He wrinkles his nose. Everything here smells like cigarettes and even if Dany went outside it would make no difference and Pierre knows it. There are things he says just to rag the imperturbable Russian. Well, imperturbable when it comes to people he likes, which apparently includes Pierre.

He flops, heavy, onto the mattress. Covers his head with the blanket, because it's never dark enough in here to sleep. There's that fucking bright streetlight right outside the window.

Pierre finds himself thinking about tomorrow. He doesn't know why.

Circles are running themselves dizzy in his head. There's a faint buzzing in his ears.

"Are you going to get that?" Dany's voice says from above. 

Confused, Pierre throws the blanket off his face and notices with slow reflexes that his phone is twitching on the floor a foot away. He gropes for it, annoyed. 

The mattress shifts, Dany sits down with his back to Pierre. He doesn't ask who is calling. 

Pierre looks at the glowing screen, and he feels a stone-heavy ache inside that he only realizes now has been conspicuously absent for some weeks now. Now that it's surging back, he admits how much better he's been without it.  _ Without him,  _ but that goes without saying.

So why is it that his fingers go for the green answer button so quickly? What kind of fucked up sense of desperation or duty or  _ desire? Self-depreciation? Death wish?  _ is seizing on him and dragging him against his will towards what will always be a dead-end road?  _ Charles is not even that, no, he's a sudden drop off of a thousand-foot cliff. _

Only, like looking over the edge, it's not just abject terror that's clutching at Pierre. He's self-aware enough to recognize that he's also grappling with overwhelming adrenaline, and it disgusts him.

_ L'appel du vide,  _ his scattered brain offers helpfully, but it's not helpful because it reminds him of the language he shares with Charles. 

Pierre's finger hovers helplessly towards the  _ answer  _ button. 

Dany lies down and tugs on the blanket, pulling enough away to cover himself. That one slight movement breaks his concentration. 

Pierre drops the phone. It stops ringing and the  _ one missed call _ notification appears. "Fuck," he whispers, overly warm and nauseous as the ache in his stomach starts to dissolve. He turns, and Dany's eyes are on him. 

Falling backwards, Pierre lets his head thump against the not-very-soft pillow and stares at the ceiling. "It was him," he mumbles, half to himself, but more to Daniil, for a reason he can't justify even to himself. He's not  _ with  _ Dany, not in so many words, (and there aren't many words), but he is "with Dany": they are partners, he trusts him more than anyone.

"I know."

Pierre doesn't reply. Slowly, he maneuvers himself into a position more tolerable for sleeping. He's too sweaty for the blanket. 

"I hope he chokes."

It's an unexpected statement, out of place, a cold dash of water to the excessive heat he feels. Pierre moves closer to Dany, but Dany looks the same, just shrugs bluntly.

This is how Daniil is sympathetic to most people: violent, deadly, grim, and cold. 

But cold is what Pierre needs right now, an ice bucket to drench his self-destructive desires, and he closes the slight space between them and kisses Dany, tastes the cigarettes and vodka. They don't share a mother tongue, but they share the same air right now and in this moment they have more in common than Pierre and Charles ever have or will.

This is how Daniil is sympathetic to Pierre: tolerant, careful, calm, and soothing. The way he touches feels like a cool cloth on Pierre's feverish skin.

When Dany is finished with him, Pierre is no longer needy and adrenaline charged and the heat in his body abating as he lays here, panting.

Dany's head lolls over and rests on his shoulder, his breath slowing down to sleep. Pierre leans his head against Dany’s.

Despite Dany’s declaration that he wouldn’t get up before nine, he does. He’s smoking a cigarette in the back parking lot when Pierre wakes at five, and he acts like nothing is odd about the hour when he comes in again and finds Pierre frying eggs on the stove.

“Made coffee,” Pierre says, and Dany pours them both a cup. 

When they’ve eaten, Dany sticks his semi-auto in his shoulder holster and Pierre sticks a handgun in his waistband. They haul the box of extra rounds out to Dany’s dirty blue honda pickup and heave it into the bed; Pierre jumps up behind it and pushes the heavy box until it’s next to the cab of the truck. He waits while Dany locks the dingy apartment and returns with a few AKs. He tosses them up, one by one, and Pierre catches them and lays them in the back. 

“You good?” Dany asks, blue eyes gazing up sharply at Pierre. 

Pierre swallows and nods. 

“Okay, then I’ll drive. Don’t miss the attic windows,” Dany says dryly.

“Fuck off, that was one time.”

Daniil grins the way he does when he’s trying to be annoying and has succeeded at it. He starts the truck and Pierre lies down in the back and stares up at the sky. It’s barely started to get light.

He counts the streets, knows the names, knows how close they’re getting before he finally gets to his knees and looks over the metal side of the truck, knuckles white as he props the AK over the edge.

Dany slides the window between the cab and the truck bed open and glances over his shoulder. They’re almost at the house now,  _ two hundred feet, one hundred feet. _

“Send ‘em to hell,” Dany says.

Pierre puts his finger on the trigger and unleashes a hail of automatic fire on the house, top to bottom,  _ every window blasted out, door splintered.  _

“Good. Don’t fall out.” Dany revs the engine and Pierre crouches down as the truck picks up speed and bumps over the bad roads. “That ought to give Mr. Binotto some thinking to do.”

Pierre snorts.  _ Oh that’s whose house this is.  _ He hopes that maybe it’s a tiny but vengeful stab at Charles as well.

Dany races the truck through the middle of town and up and down the back streets, only slowing when he’s sure no one managed to tail them. He looks back at Pierre then. “You feel like dishing out a little more?”

“You’re the one with the nickname “Torpedo”, Dany, maybe you’d like to dish it out yourself?”

“Учись, пока я жив,” Dany mutters, rolling his eyes, and Pierre doesn’t understand, but he does laugh. “Whatever, Petya, let’s go.” Dany lurches the car forward and then jams on the brake, jerking Pierre around. 

Pierre flips him off. 

Dany just grins rakishly and accelerates again, turning left towards the bridge to the side of town where the warehouses and shipping yards sit. 

“It just so happens,” he says loudly as the truck bumps over the poorly maintained roads, “that Merc brought a drug shipment in here last night, word from Marko is that it’s quality stuff.” Dany pauses, shrugs, continues. “He also said not to get involved, leave it for Max and Alex, but you know...всё равно будет война.” He pauses, remembers that Pierre doesn’t understand. “You know... there’ll be a war anyhow.”

“True enough,” Pierre says, and he pulls his hood up to block the wind that’s blowing in now from the ocean as they get closer to the docks. Dany looks into the rearview mirror of the truck and their eyes meet. Pierre thinks he can feel the question Dany’s asking.

_ You down for this? _

Pierre just nods. Dany doesn’t need words from him.

The sky is gray, almost white, and the waves that Pierre can make out from across the shipyards look distressed. The weather seems torn between deciding to snow or rain, but doing neither at this moment. The docks are empty.

Well, mostly.

When they round the corner, Dany’s hands tight on the wheel and Pierre ready with an AK and a full magazine, there are exactly the people they’d expected to see. Petty Mercedes underlings, most of them wearing the gang symbols for Williams, moving about like factory workers.

_ Merc must be stretched thin if they’re calling on Williams to lend a hand with this one.  _ But then again, someone from Williams did once almost succeed in taking out Max when Wolff still had the bounty over his head. There was that to be considered.

Mostly though, Pierre was considering other things, especially when a bullet put a dent in the rusting metal of Daniil’s truck. “They’ve got a sniper,” Dany says, slamming on the gas. “I’m gonna get us too close for his comfort.”

“That’s one way of doing it,” Pierre mutters, crouched down, waiting. Dany swerves hard, drifts the wheels just a bit, and Pierre empties a clip at the handful of men standing about. He’s not really concerned about hitting them though, his eyes are straining at the tops of the shipping containers and at the buildings nearby, and he can’t see anything. 

Dany spins the truck around for another pass and Pierre clings to the side of the truck bed for an instant before Dany is accelerating forward again. 

There’s a loud shattering of glass as the driver’s side window takes a stray bullet, and Dany curses as the glass showers over him.

Clearly there’s been a lot of scrambling from the Mercedes/Williams collaboration as they come to their senses and realize there’s about to be another round. Dany, for his part, seems energized by it.  _ He’s fucking laughing,  _ Pierre realizes, but he isn’t surprised, but  _ it’s Dany  _ after all, and he’s nihilistic and fucked up and insane and Pierre doesn’t care, he doesn’t at all. Dany  _ knows  _ this world, and he  _ knows  _ he’ll wind up dead somewhere eventually, and all he wants to do between now and then is  _ fucking burn shit down. _

“Инсульт-привет!” Dany yells out the shattered window. “Hello, stroke victims!”

And Pierre opens fire, putting holes through every moving thing in sight and a lot of inanimate things as well. He’s buzzing, deaf to the world, unafraid, unfettered, he feels a little drunk, or high, or altered somehow. His hands don’t feel like his own, his brain is detached from his body, and he is too slow to keep himself from falling backwards onto the bed of the truck as Dany puts the pedal to the metal and gets them the hell out of range.

A snowflake falls onto the back of his hand and he stares at it as it melts away.

Another falls, and another. They fall on his face, his hair, remind him that his body and his mind are connected, remind him that he is still in one piece, still alive, still going.

Dany is swearing loudly from the driver’s seat. 

Pierre lurches towards the window to the cab and manages to sit up and hang on despite the reckless abandon with which Dany is driving. “What’s happened?”

“Fucking Merc behind us. It’s Lewis.”

Pierre looks, and it is. “Fuck. I’ll try and put a bullet in him.”

“Don’t fucking do that!” Dany yells, loud even to Pierre’s gun-deaf ears. “We don’t need Wolff to come here from wherever the hell he is, he’ll kill us all. Just get him off of our tail, will you?”

“Copy that,” Pierre says, because Dany is right. He sees Lewis coming up close behind and instinctively crouches down, not a moment too soon, either, Lewis has a hand with a gun hanging out the window of his black G-class.

A split second later, the back window of the truck explodes into shrapnel, and all Pierre can think is that  _ it’s fucking lucky I had my back turned,  _ and then of course he thinks of Dany, but Dany is focused, still driving like a maniac.

Pierre turns to lift his AK-47 again, but when he tries to raise the muzzle to fire, he can’t.

At first, he doesn’t understand. _Why,_ _what’s happening, why doesn’t my hand work,_ but then he sees it, his hand is full of glass shards, he’d been covering his head when the glass broke.

“Fuck!” He yells. “Fuck, I can’t, Dany, my hand…” 

“Are you hit?” Dany asks, and even in this panicked moment, Pierre can hear something in his voice, that strange _ concern,  _ the _ sympathy _ that Dany doesn’t have for others,  _ only for me _ . 

“No, the glass,” Pierre calls back, letting the gun slip from his fingers. 

“I can’t outrun him.” Dany doesn’t dare to look back, but he’s clearly on the verge of taking extreme measures. “We just don’t have the speed.”

It’s strange, but Pierre doesn’t really think, he just  _ does,  _ and the next instant he’s through the broken window and in the cab with Dany and he’s reaching for the steering wheel with the hand that isn’t shredded. 

And Dany, like so many other times, doesn’t need explanations or words, he just lets Pierre climb over him, smear blood on the dash, leave a handprint on the windshield. 

When Pierre is sitting at the wheel, Dany is disappearing through the window. Pierre hits the gas and tries to steer, and knows now where Dany has been taking them, so he makes the turn he knows he should make and he doesn’t have time to check his mirrors when he hears the  _ pop, pop, pop  _ of the AK in the back. He keeps his eyes on the road, takes another turn at 80mph, doesn’t check on Dany, just checks on the gas gauge.

He doesn’t have to check on Dany either, because the next second Dany is dropping in beside him on the glass covered seat and taking the bloody steering wheel out of Pierre’s hands. Pierre doesn’t have to ask what happened because now they’re passing the cross streets that mark the edge of Red Bull’s territory and not even Lewis will follow them here.

  
  


Pierre doesn’t go into headquarters with Dany; he picks the glass out of his hand and feels thankful to be alive and doesn’t really give a shit what Marko says about that. He has a feeling that the only reason Dany actually answered Marko’s phone call and showed up to his office is that Dany wants to laugh in his face.

He knows he’s right when Dany is still laughing to himself when he walks out a few minutes later. Pierre doesn’t ask about it, Dany doesn’t tell.

“Come on,” Dany tells him, opening the truck’s passenger door. “We’re leaving this junk pile here. Marko’s gonna deal with it.”

“How will we get home?”

Dany points to another car, and Pierre knows it’s Alex’s, and for some reason that makes him feel something like pleasure. God knows how many times he’s had to let Alex use his car for some random dumbass errand. He knows Dany feels the same when he deliberately steps into a slushy puddle before he gets into the driver’s seat, leaving muddy footprints on the car’s pristine floor rugs.

The ride is quiet and comparatively slow.

Dany asks, “Is your hand okay?” and Pierre nods, and that’s all they say until Dany parks the car behind their crappy apartment building and Pierre follows him inside.

“Sink,” Dany says, and Pierre knows what’s happening and cringes inwardly, but he obeys, and over the sink Daniil pulls out the rest of the glass, one shard at a time, and Pierre looks away and holds his breath, gasping a little at the worst ones.

“Shh, Petya,” Dany says against his ear, and Pierre realizes how tired he is and how much his body hurts and he rests his head against Dany’s shoulder, casual as ever, seeking the closeness and comfort, and he swears Dany brushes a kiss over the top of his head before he goes back to getting the glass out. 

When it’s all out, Dany taps Pierre’s shoulder and asks him if he wants a drink before they clean it, and Pierre says yes. He downs a couple vodka shots, scowls at the taste.

Dany smirks just a little, but he’s all kindness when he asks, “do you want to sit on the counter?” And Pierre nods and slides onto the ugly yellow countertop and clenches his teeth and holds his hand over the sink.

Grabbing his wrist lightly, Dany looks up at him,  _ pitying,  _ again, so far from the cold, ruthless Dany that most people see. “I’ll do it quick,” he says quietly, and he does, he douses Pierre’s hand with the clear vodka and holds it still as Pierre reflexively tries to jerk it away. 

Pierre cries out, because it  _ fucking burns,  _ and he blinks away the tears that come,  _ I’m past that, this is my life now, and I can’t be a fucking weakling _ , his mind says, but Dany leans over and presses light kisses to his cheek and over his jaw, whispers “shh, I’m done now,” in his ear.

They drink in front of the TV, like always, and Pierre starts to fall asleep, so Dany shakes his shoulder and says, “Let’s just go to bed, mm?”

So they lie down, and Pierre checks the bandages on his hand, it’s late, and suddenly Pierre thinks of Charles calling last night and it seems like years ago.  _ Maybe it’s just that every day I’m getting further away from who I used to be.  _

His phone vibrates then, and he looks at it and laughs a little hysterically, because  _ of course he’d fucking call now, it’s as if he knows when I think about him.  _ But tonight is different from last night, last night’s Pierre hadn’t survived the one more day that tonight’s Pierre has, and  _ it’s funny the difference a day makes, isn’t it Charles?  _ And Pierre can feel Dany’s eyes on him as he picks up the phone and answers it.

“Gasly.”

“ _ Mon coeur,  _ there you are, I thought you might be ignoring me,” Charles purrs, and Pierre’s stomach churns.  _ What is it about Charles that makes me lose all the strength I think I have? _

“Come over,  _ Cheri,”  _ Charles continues, voice like velvet, tempting like sugar, but Pierre looks at Dany, who is leaning on his elbow next to him and watching, and he thinks that  _ maybe I don’t have a sweet tooth like I used to anymore. _

“Charles,” Pierre says, more coldly than he thought possible, “I shot up Binotto’s house earlier and that was enough action for one day, so I think I’ll be staying in.”

The deathly silence on the line is so unexpected that it’s all Pierre can do to keep from filling the space with hysterical laughter. He doesn’t know this part of himself, he doesn’t know where it’s been all these years, but he thinks he likes it, thinks he could get used to it.

Charles bursts into a fit of french swearing and Pierre finds he doesn’t want to listen anymore, so he hangs up and looks at Dany.

Dany is looking back at him, smile playing around his lips, and Pierre can see it, Dany is  _ fucking proud.  _ When he kisses him, he can feel it through his veins.

Dany, who is an asshole to a lot of people a lot of the time, is proud of him, and Pierre thinks that maybe he too is becoming less sympathetic, less kind. 

_ You are yourself, Petya, don’t let them make you something else. Fight back,  _ Dany taught him

And he decides, as he kisses Dany more deeply, resting his injured hand on Dany’s chest to feel his heartbeat, that he feels like himself in this moment, he thinks this must be what Dany feels like all the time, and  _ fuck it,  _ Pierre feels like he can take on the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Here's translations of the slang I used and if any actual Russians happen to pop up around here and have something to critique about it, by all means they should do so because like mondaycore I am but a humble americanski and while I have some knowledge I'm not anywhere near fluent enough to be certain of much.
> 
> Потом—суп с котом: And then, soup with the cat. An idiom that means "and then, I don't care." Crow_Dust explained to me that it is something you say when you're pessimistic about your future prospects.
> 
> Учись, пока я жив: You should learn from me while I'm still alive.
> 
> Инсульт-привет!: Hello, Stroke Victims!  
> Now, a little explanation. This is a play on an old Soviet greeting for athletes ("Физкульт-привет, meaning something like "physical culture greetings") and the word "инсульт", meaning "a stroke." It's used to make fun of the old Soviet style of doing things. "Hello stroke victims" is about the best translation I can find.
> 
> The title comes from a song by The Dambuilders called Drive By Kiss. It seemed like it fit the story.
> 
> Thanks anyone who read this and thanks again to Mondaycore, and if you would be so kind as to let me know what you think, I would appreciate it!!!
> 
> I'd welcome any comments from anyone!
> 
> And of course, don't copy/post/remove this to anywhere and let it be known that it is totally fictional, as if there were any mistaking it.


End file.
